Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Special Minister of State (Senator Farrell) to a question without notice I asked today relating to donations to political parties.

Any legislation to deliver electoral funding reforms must strengthen democracy and not just the political fortunes of the big parties. The Greens have long advocated to get the influence of big money right out of politics and to stop democracy being for sale. We've long supported donations caps, transparency, spending caps, limits on lobbying access and pay for policy outcomes. But, if there remain loopholes in these bills for electoral reform that only the two big parties can use, then this is a rort not a reform.

For years, the Greens have championed reforms to clean up our democracy, including by getting big money out of politics and addressing the incumbency advantages that stack outcomes in favour of the two-party system. One in three voters chose to vote for someone other than the two big parties at the last election. They deserve to see their vote result in representation in parliament, and this will be our measuring stick for what makes good reform.

The Australia Institute published some polling yesterday saying that more than four out of five voters think that the proposed changes to the electoral laws should be reviewed before they are passed by this parliament. That's no surprise, because rushed legislation is often very bad legislation. The government has said that this is the largest reform in 40 years of the foundations of the way that our democracy works. Well, the usual practice is that, either in this place or even in the other chamber, when bills are brought here, you scrutinise that legislation through an inquiry process. When bills go through that process of scrutiny, they're very often improved. Either there are some flaws in the bills that were unintended or, perhaps in this case, the flaws in the bills are intended to ensure that the two-party system gets some life support.

For such extensive reforms, the Senate inquiry is all the more important, yet the government has the opposition with them to rush this electoral funding bill through without a Senate inquiry. Why the rush? These reforms aren't even scheduled to come into effect, to apply, until not this coming election but the one after, so there's absolutely no reason to race this through without a Senate inquiry scrutinising the details. So it makes me very suspicious when the two big parties are in agreement and want to ram through changes.

For a very long time, and recently, the Greens in this place, together with some of the Independents, have been arguing strongly that the rules around who gets to fund and own politicians need to change. We need greater transparency. We need greater disclosure. There are some good measures in what the government is proposing—in many instances, it's because they have picked up measures that we've all been advocating for for a long time—but there's a lot more in the bill. There's a new nominated entity rule, which seems to allow the war chests of the big parties to be grandfathered in and then spent nationally under the extremely generous $90 million national spending cap, yet they want to cut off the opportunity for new political entrants, for people seeking to be elected, to fight on a level playing field.

We want big money out of politics but not just new big money while the largesse of the two big parties carries on virtually unhampered. How strange that the government wants to race through the funding rules but their bill for truth in political advertising is on the backburner. There's no rush there. Apparently we don't have a problem with mis- and disinformation in the electoral context. Tell that to Australians.

Public funding for political parties will increase, but there'll be no obligation for them to not make stuff up about their political opponents. The onus is really on the government to explain why, in what they're calling the largest reform in 40 years, they want to bypass the standard practice of this parliament to have a Senate inquiry into a detailed piece of legislation.

Less than a third of the country voted for this government, a bit more than a third voted for the opposition and about a third voted for someone else. One-third of the country did not want either of the two big political parties. The government of the day could approach that reality by saying, 'Well, maybe we should listen to what a third of the country are saying and maybe lift our game and put forward some policies that might actually improve people's lives,' or they could say, 'We'll just try and change the rules of the game to shore up our diminishing vote.'

By racing through this bill without a Senate inquiry, it sends a message to the public that the two parties are rigging the rules because they don't have the courage to implement policies that will actually help people and the planet.

Question agreed to.